Seriously?!? Dude, your god drowned the whole world's population except for 8 people. Pol Pot is a saint compared to your god. Based on this chart a hell of a lot more people died during the flood than those who died in Pol Pots reign.

And this is an example of godwins law. It doesn't really go very far.

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"Great moments are born from great opportunities." Herb Brooks

I edit a lot of my posts. The reason being it to add content or to correct grammar/wording. All edits to remove wording get a strike through through the wording.

No, like Fox News, just trying to be fair and balanced. I've seen several comments in several threads blaming theists and religion for mass slaughters, so I thought I'd do some campaigning for your side.

Next up, Joseph Stalin. Depending on which source you look up, you might see 10 million or tens of millions of people who died under his rule.

We don't even have to discuss God in this thread. This is just all about how great it is to be an atheist with absolute power and what happens when you have the power to let your worldview and convictions (or lack of) play out to their logical conclusion.

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A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God's truth is attacked and yet would remain silent. - John Calvin

Saturday, 28 February 2009Posted by faithlessgod at 13:49Categories:: ethics, religion

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Well is it? How on earth can I be asking a question? Well this is what the evidence, according to one popular argument popular with theists, shows! Ironically this argument is disputed by many atheists but it seems neither atheists nor theists have bothered to check the facts, no surprise that theists have not or they would remain very quiet on this topic.

Of course, I am addressing that old canard popular with some theists of the amount of atrocities brought about by 20the century "atheist" regimes. I will drop the scare quotes for this dubious labelling but please assume it throughout this post. This is no excuse to take any of what follows out of context.

This argument makes no sense since belief or lack of belief in god alone does not tell you anything at all about ones' economic, political, social or moral beliefs. One cannot make any such conclusion based just this data.

Secondly just because there is a belief held in common such as a lack of belief in the gods or a belief in the gods does not imply that any other beliefs are shared. An additional argument needs to made to show this is the case, if indeed it is the case.

Of course certain popular theistic worldviews have an additional belief that one "cannot be moral without god", but that is a belief not shared by all theists (and these are emphatically not being addressed in this post) and certainly not by most likely any atheist. This belief is a prejudice and, if not supported by evidence, is an unsound basis to (pre)judge other's moral standings.

Still it is not sufficient even if this evidence is supported that one can apply this categorisation as a means to infer the moral status of anyone. To categorise anyone without checking that the asserted dependency is based on solid evidence with strong support and ignoring arguments that demonstrate it is not, is bigotry.

Well does this specific group of theists have any evidence to support their claims? This is where the atrocities of 20th century regimes is offered.

However those theists who use Hitler as supporting evidence, have failed demonstrate that Hitler, his Positive Christianity and the Nazi Movement and its supporters were an atheist regime and there is nearly overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It is more than reasonable to conclude that anyone who basis an argument on such demonstrably false data is a bigot.

However although not all such theists would use Hitler they could only or drop back to Stalin, Pol Pot and others. And atheists have often been distracted by dealing with Hitler canard alone to see the bigger picture.

What bigger picture? Well one of the basis of my writing here is that everyone should be subjected to the same standard and not a double standard. In this case, as noted at the beginning of this post, the standard being used by such theists is one to be rejected by any honest and ethical person - regardless of their theistic beliefs.

However it is quite legitimate to show the problems in a flawed standard and why it should not be advocated and this is what I want to demonstrate here. This is to use the standard as defined by the specific theists in question and evaluate regimes in terms of atrocities usually measured by direct deaths caused and to use the same standard to classify regimes as theist or atheist.

One also has to note that there has been historical demographic differences between the distribution of theistic and atheistic beliefs in populations and this needs to taken into account. Also since population levels have substantially changed through time, generally increasing this also has to be taken into account. However this analysis will note this issue but not do such calculations in drawing these preliminary conclusions. This could be left for another post or another blogger if they are so interested. (I did one such isolated example of this in a previous post).

What does the evidence show if we look at history impartially and use the standard imposed by such theists as they think the argument supports their case?

First of all I will the grant the point used by theists who make this argument that atheism is on the increase and, if they are correct, that the amount of atheists is the highest it has ever been and conservatively use today's ratio of atheists to theists over the past, that is not assume there were fewer atheists than today.

Now I use the data provided by adherents.com which classifies 16% of the worlds populations as "non-religious" in their article Major Religions of the World Ranked by Number of Adherents. This 16% includes atheists, agnostics, none or expressed no religious preference but half of this number are those who are theistic but non-religious. I will conservatively include all 16% a bias against atheists.

So these two conservative assumptions serve to increase the likely proportion of atheists versus theist ration historically, which some atheist would argue is a bias in favour of theists. I am only doing this because I am trying to help theists out with their argument and to avoid any accusations of bias in favour of atheists. That is there should be an expected ratio of 1:6 atheist: theist regimes. .

Well now what is the historical data classifying deaths according to theistic and atheistic regimes?

Luckily - for me - I just discovered a sterling piece of analysis carried out by the Teapot Atheist on nearly exactly the basis I was going to undertake. It is worth looking in detail at Teapot Atheist's data but I leave that as an exercise to the reader. I use here only the summary data.

Over all of recorded history the death toll by "atheistic" regimes (considered broadly 95,000,000 (including Stalin but excluding Hitler), Hitler/Mussolini 72,000,000 Million and all "theistic" regimes including Hitler/Mussolini/World War 2 2,229,074,100. If we move this highly disputed 72,000,000 from the "theist" to the "atheist" tally the numbers becomes Atheists: 162,000,000 and the Theists 2,157,000,000 (to the nearest million). We can now compare expectations.

If we take the atheist figure as the base line we would expect around 6 times 162 Million deaths from theistic regimes if there is not contribution from theistic beliefs one way or another. This is 972 Million yet the actual figure is well over twice that, against those theists!

Alternatively if we take the theist figure as the base line we would expect around 2.157 M divided by 6 deaths from atheistic regimes if there is no contribution from theistic beliefs one way or another. This is 359.2 Million yet the actual figure is well under twice that, against those theists!

So making many assumptions in favour of theists the best we can possibly do is show the theistic regimes when the go wrong are over twice as lethal as atheist regimes when they go wrong. Remember we are accepting the highly dubious presumptions of such arguments but the outcome is quite the opposite of what those theists who make such an argument realize!

We could look at the danger of theistic regimes over the whole of history and then we see that the lethality of such regimes is 13 times more likely to lead to death than an atheistic regime (2,157 divided by 162).

If we take the demographic difference into account then being in an atheistic population is 6 times less likely than being in a theistic one over the whole of history and since the danger of death due to theism is already 13 as great, this scales up the danger on a per person level by 13*6 to96!!! That is the odds of an atheist causing death is nearly 100 times less than a theist!

The above served as my attention grabbing headline. Can you see the flaw in my reasoning?

Of course all the above maths is rudimentary but this is the point. One does a quick scan of available data to see if the evidence is worth inspecting in more detail. Is it worth doing proper statistical significance and correlation analysis and looking for confounding factors and so on. Well as soon as one checks for confounding factors their whole argument disintegrates, they clearly have not done that anyway.

Instead they have simply assumed they are correct and have looked for evidence to support their conclusion. Not the behaviour of someone who is ethical and very ironic in the case of some using this to argue their supposed moral superiority. This in many many ways is a self-defeating argument made such theists. Clearly theists who have made this argument have not bothered to realize the implications of their reasoning. If they did they would drop such an argument immediately. Even if we stop at the lethality of theistic beliefs only being twice as great as atheistic ones and I repeat this best result of the most conservative analysis biased in such theists favour. Their whole argument is absurd and immoral as is the supposed evidence to support it, as it is however one looks at it, it is against them (not theists per se, just those how proffer such arguments).

So such theists only get away with this because they have unethically selected the data that they think supports their case and most honest and ethical people regardless of theistic belief would either reject it - because we know such reasoning is so flawed to start with - or are distracted by legitimately challenging some of the selected data. ion rather than consider all of the data. I considered all the data here only to provide a new means to help discourage such poor arguments, not to bolster this as a basis to argue on this theme for one side or the other.

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"...but on a lighter note, demons were driven from a pig today in Gloucester." Bill Bailey

kin hell, why did faithlessgod appeal to standards and speak of double standards? If there is no god, then why should I be concerned with living up to faithlessgod's standards or your standards?

If you want to discuss theistic mass murderers, let's start a new thread, but for now, let's just try to get to the facts about ATHEISTS who have committed mass murders and genocide in the 20th century. We can only enjoy so much fun at one time, let's save some for later!

Behind Door # 3 we have Mao Zedong of China. 45 million deaths have been blamed on him.

I've seen several comments in several threads blaming theists and religion for mass slaughters, so I thought I'd do some campaigning for your side.

I don't know what threads you are talking about. As far is this thread goes it all depends on the reason behind the killings. As far as I know Pol Pol and Joe Stalin never killed anyone in the name of atheism.

kin hell, why did faithlessgod appeal to standards and speak of double standards? If there is no god, then why should I be concerned with living up to faithlessgod's standards or your standards?

If you want to discuss theistic mass murderers, let's start a new thread, but for now, let's just try to get to the facts about ATHEISTS who have committed mass murders and genocide in the 20th century. We can only enjoy so much fun at one time, let's save some for later!

Behind Door # 3 we have Mao Zedong of China. 45 million deaths have been blamed on him.

re Joseph Stalin from Wikipedia (since article at the link you provided did not mention anything regarding his belief or lack thereof)

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"[Stalin's] atheism remained rooted in some vague idea of a God of nature." One account states that Stalin's reversal on bans against the church during World War II followed a sign that he believed he received from heaven.

Atheism isn't "rooted in some vague idea of a God of nature." That could be called paganism - maybe, depending upon actual beliefs. But some sort of theism.

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Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding. - Martin Luther

Lets ignore the modern day Christan mass murders in Croatia in WW2 was a Roman Catholic Nazi state, that killed an estimated 700,000 Serbs and other minorities with the enthusiastic support of Roman Catholic priests, Modern Serb fascism led to the killing of perhaps 200,000 innocent civilian men, women and children in 1991-9, or even protestant death squads in Ireland.

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When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”--- Sinclair Lewis

I believe there is something out there watching over us. Unfortunately, it's the government.

I assume, in your opinion, the dastardly atheists exist because of the fall. Why are you so surprised they exist?

Stalin didn't kill people over atheism. He killed because he was a paranoid, power-hungry asshole (who happened to drop out of seminary school, where he was studying for the preisthood. What did you guys do to him?)

Idiots come in many forms. Actually, you should be happy a fe tyrants were atheists. Otherwise you would have a lot of 'splainen to do.

I assume you have Hitler on your list, even though the belt buckles of his elite SStroops read "god with us". I should point out that if I were a similar type tyrant, none of my thugs would be wearing such belt buckles. But you've probably been told hat little Adolph was an atheist, because we get that a lot around here.

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It isn't true that non-existent gods can't do anything. For instance, they were able to make me into an atheist.

kin hell, why did faithlessgod appeal to standards and speak of double standards? If there is no god, then why should I be concerned with living up to faithlessgod's standards or your standards?

If you want to discuss theistic mass murderers, let's start a new thread, but for now, let's just try to get to the facts about ATHEISTS who have committed mass murders and genocide in the 20th century. We can only enjoy so much fun at one time, let's save some for later!

Behind Door # 3 we have Mao Zedong of China. 45 million deaths have been blamed on him.

Did Stalin, Hitler or Mao kill those millions alone? Would have taken them an awfully long time. No they motivated others to do it. Now what would they use for motivation? They used the usual motivators. Racism, greed, the lust for power and some people are just downright mean.It's amazing just how vicious seemingly civilised people can become when given absolute power over others. There have been many studies on the subject. Religious beliefs or not it doesn't appear to make any difference at all. The SS guys running the death camps had "Gott Mitt Us" (God with us) engraved on their belt buckles. Why would atheists just kill jews anyway?

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"Atheism is not a mission to convert the world. It only seems that way because when other religions fall away, atheism is what is left behind".

Friends, I'm not saying your comments aren't worthy of discussion, but after all this thread is titled:

"ATHEISTS who have committed mass murders and genocide in the 20th century".

Show your fellow atheists (Stalin, Mussolini, Pol Pot, et al) some respect here and discuss their noble humanitarian reigns and deeds. If I wanted to discuss THEISTS who have committed mass murders, well, that subject just seems to be a little over-done on this forum, but we can start a new thread and get totally redundant, reposting old posts and saying the same stuff that's been said many, many times in this forum and pretending its all new.

I don't have a problem discussing theists who have committed mass murders and genocide, because I acknowledge that there are theistic leaders who have done so. I also acknowledge that just because someone claims to be a theist doesn't make them one, but I also acknowledge that just because someone claims to be a theist doesn't make him any different in my book from an atheist. Theism in itself is not noble or grand. It can be just as hideous, or more so, than atheism in my eyes. Belief in a god or gods doesn't mean someone is morally superior to someone who is an agnostic or an atheist.

You've made a list, and said they were atheists. That doesn't constitute a discussion, only a listing of facts. What do you want to discuss about it? Yep, a few folks who happened to be atheists were also assholes. You know that. We know that. A few folks who were believers behaved similarly. You know that. We know that. Your point is?

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It isn't true that non-existent gods can't do anything. For instance, they were able to make me into an atheist.

kin hell, why did faithlessgod appeal to standards and speak of double standards? If there is no god, then why should I be concerned with living up to faithlessgod's standards or your standards?

If you want to discuss theistic mass murderers, let's start a new thread, but for now, let's just try to get to the facts about ATHEISTS who have committed mass murders and genocide in the 20th century. We can only enjoy so much fun at one time, let's save some for later!

Behind Door # 3 we have Mao Zedong of China. 45 million deaths have been blamed on him.

Did Stalin, Hitler or Mao kill those millions alone? Would have taken them an awfully long time. No they motivated others to do it. Now what would they use for motivation? They used the usual motivators. Racism, greed, the lust for power and some people are just downright mean.It's amazing just how vicious seemingly civilised people can become when given absolute power over others. There have been many studies on the subject. Religious beliefs or not it doesn't appear to make any difference at all. The SS guys running the death camps had "Gott Mitt Us" (God with us) engraved on their belt buckles. Why would atheists just kill jews anyway?

Frank, you are right. These guys had help. You hit the nail on the head - "Racism, greed, the lust for power and some people are just downright mean." That's the whole point of why God has to judge people. See, you do know His standards after all and you know when people don't meet the standards.

Would you say that Gott of "Gott Mitt Us" is the same God that the Jews worshiped? Probably not.

Why would atheists kill Jews? I will go on record as saying that I don't believe Hitler was a pure atheist but rather someone with some really weird beliefs in the supernatural. Leaving out the spiritual explanation and just going with a secular explanation - 1) Evolutionary views led Hitler (after reading Nietzche) to believe that some "races" of mankind were more superior than others. Aryans were superior to Jews. Since Hitler's God was not the God of the Bible (as evidenced by Hitler's murder of many Protestant pastors), Hitler thought he could kill Jews because they were "inferior". I haven't researched enough to determine why Stalin killed Jews.

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A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God's truth is attacked and yet would remain silent. - John Calvin

Why would atheists kill Jews? I will go on record as saying that I don't believe Hitler was a pure atheist but rather someone with some really weird beliefs in the supernatural. Leaving out the spiritual explanation and just going with a secular explanation - 1) Evolutionary views led Hitler (after reading Nietzche) to believe that some "races" of mankind were more superior than others. Aryans were superior to Jews. Since Hitler's God was not the God of the Bible (as evidenced by Hitler's murder of many Protestant pastors), Hitler thought he could kill Jews because they were "inferior". I haven't researched enough to determine why Stalin killed Jews.

Right, I guess it goes back to the True Christiantm, people say that Anders Behring-Breivik was not a christian also, but his face book claimed that he was and he was baptized when he was 15.

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When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”--- Sinclair Lewis

I believe there is something out there watching over us. Unfortunately, it's the government.

Show your fellow atheists (Stalin, Mussolini, Pol Pot, et al) some respect here and discuss their noble humanitarian reigns and deeds. If I wanted to discuss THEISTS who have committed mass murders, well, that subject just seems to be a little over-done on this forum, but we can start a new thread and get totally redundant, reposting old posts and saying the same stuff that's been said many, many times in this forum and pretending its all new.

You have yet to show that Stalin or any of the others are athiests and that they got people to kill for them for supposedly athiest reasons. All you have done is pick leaders who have slaughtered millions who don't have a clear theist connection - big deal. I would expect there to be quite a few through-out history. While far too many millions have died for theist reasons, there are millions who died for plenty of other reasons. (No, I don't have names and numbers.)

You have yet to make a genuinely on-topic post yourself.

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Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding. - Martin Luther

kin hell, why did faithlessgod appeal to standards and speak of double standards? If there is no god, then why should I be concerned with living up to faithlessgod's standards or your standards?

If you want to discuss theistic mass murderers, let's start a new thread, but for now, let's just try to get to the facts about ATHEISTS who have committed mass murders and genocide in the 20th century. We can only enjoy so much fun at one time, let's save some for later!

Behind Door # 3 we have Mao Zedong of China. 45 million deaths have been blamed on him.

Did Stalin, Hitler or Mao kill those millions alone? Would have taken them an awfully long time. No they motivated others to do it. Now what would they use for motivation? They used the usual motivators. Racism, greed, the lust for power and some people are just downright mean.It's amazing just how vicious seemingly civilised people can become when given absolute power over others. There have been many studies on the subject. Religious beliefs or not it doesn't appear to make any difference at all. The SS guys running the death camps had "Gott Mitt Us" (God with us) engraved on their belt buckles. Why would atheists just kill jews anyway?

Frank, you are right. These guys had help. You hit the nail on the head - "Racism, greed, the lust for power and some people are just downright mean." That's the whole point of why God has to judge people. See, you do know His standards after all and you know when people don't meet the standards.

God doesn't exist to judge anybody. All those people are dead and I doubt it's much comfort to them or their loved ones that god is judging them. Stalin died of old age in bed, as did Mao. Hitler made it into his 60's and Pol Pot was 73.Where was god before the killing started? He's all knowing so why didn't he just give them all heart attacks before they came to power?

PS. Hitler just used christian anti semetism. He didn't have to try very hard at all.

PPS. Presumably god judged all those dead jews as well and discovering they weren't christians sent them straight to hell.

« Last Edit: December 29, 2011, 11:04:41 PM by Frank »

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"Atheism is not a mission to convert the world. It only seems that way because when other religions fall away, atheism is what is left behind".

You've been posting here for 3 years but you still don't understand that the topic sometimes gets widened? (And things sometimes go off-topic.)

I still have the right to try to keep the focus on "ATHEISTS yada yada yada yada"

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You have yet to show that Stalin or any of the others are athiests and that they got people to kill for them for supposedly athiest reasons. All you have done is pick leaders who have slaughtered millions who don't have a clear theist connection - big deal. I would expect there to be quite a few through-out history. While far too many millions have died for theist reasons, there are millions who died for plenty of other reasons. (No, I don't have names and numbers.)

You are free to look up online or check out books at the library or buy them at Amazon and research these people further. I've provided a few links for each person named. You are smart - Google their names.

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A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God's truth is attacked and yet would remain silent. - John Calvin

God doesn't exist to judge anybody. All those people are dead and I doubt it's much comfort to them or their loved ones that god is judging them.

So why waste your time discussing and debating this stuff? Eat, drink, and be merry! Go have yourself a party instead of hanging out with a bunch of dead-end, no-real-purpose-in-life accidental blobs of flesh.

You are free to look up online or check out books at the library or buy them at Amazon and research these people further. I've provided a few links for each person named. You are smart - Google their names.

YOUR premise is that they are atheists so YOU need to show that they are.

Do you think that Pol Pot and Joe Stalin would have killed just as many people if they were theists?

Yes - as many since I see no indication of religion being a major factor. It looks like Stalin was severely psychologically damaged and the others not really any better. If you buy the premise (and I'm not sure I do) of the article above by faithlessgod, then they would have killed more - and by a factor of 13, supposedly.

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Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding. - Martin Luther

God doesn't exist to judge anybody. All those people are dead and I doubt it's much comfort to them or their loved ones that god is judging them.

So why waste your time discussing and debating this stuff? Eat, drink, and be merry! Go have yourself a party instead of hanging out with a bunch of dead-end, no-real-purpose-in-life accidental blobs of flesh.

Because it annoys rapture fruit loops like you. I also think our successes scare you. Atheism has made many inroads in America and I'm sure it will make many more. A few more years and it will be as secular as europe is. You should think yourself lucky. Here you can post as much as you like but I've tried posting at religious boards. I'm lucky to make it to 3 posts before I'm banned. So much for free speech.

BTW. Which of those conservative no hopers do you intend to vote for next year. Serial Adulterer Gingrich appears to be flavour of the month. What about Romney. Although he is a mormon. Would a vote for him send you to hell?

« Last Edit: December 29, 2011, 11:22:07 PM by Frank »

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"Atheism is not a mission to convert the world. It only seems that way because when other religions fall away, atheism is what is left behind".